ON THE ROAD!
1- Travel notes
Yes..remembering Jack Kerouac!
A short trip from Santa Fè to San Francisco..or Frisco as is called!
I started with a Chevy (a Pontiac of nineteen fifty-seven was impossible to find!) with a friend of travel.
Maryanne, that in this moment is driving, is good company, and we speak only in English. (she’s from Brazil and doesn’t speak Italian and I don’t speak Portuguese!)
The tank is full and the radio is tuned on radio one o five point seven, classical rock music and country, it’s perfect for this kind of trip.
The sun is high in the sky and we head straight south. There is a little bit of traffic, but we don’t worry, the landscape is left to watch.
To Albuquerque we leave the highway I-25 and take the I-40 to the west!
The navigator tells us that for three hundred miles we don’t have to change direction.
Maryanne sometimes has mercy on me and stops the car to let me smoke a cigarette.
The landscape runs away like the miles. Desert, rocks, and trees are beautiful to watch.
We get to Arizona, It’s time to change the driver.
A pit stop for a coffee and a cigarette (this just for me!) and go away to the west!
The light is very nice and the clouds in the sky slowly change color.
The sunset, when it arrives, finds us near Flagstaff, our first step of this travel.
It’s an amazing sunset in front of us and in the back the night runs toward us.
It’s arrived when we are, finally, in a lodge, just in time for dinner! 🙂
2- Travel notes
This morning I asked to my self if Jack Kerouak has known people strange as the couple who run the lodge where i spend my night!..very strange indeed!
Anyway..after a little breakfast (and the band Supertramp, with their very famous album “Breakfast in America” immediatly comes to my mind!) the highway I-40’s waiting for us to continue our trip.
We leave Flagstaff and its beautiful trees for crossing the Arizona country.
After only a few miles of Alpine landscape, some hills not too high and some curves, the landscape that appears is really amazing.
A lot of miles of desert to California!
A long ribbon on asphalt, such as a black scotch, that connects a different kinds of desert.
Seventy-five mph, one hundred and twelve fahrenheit degrees are the only things that don’t change for more than three hundred miles.
The rest of the landscape is constantly changing..small changes..like the mountains on the horizon, or little strange trees like a cactus.
I snap a few photos with my phone, to distract me from a boring drive, but I know that I’m adding these images at to the future nostalgia!
Today’s topic for conversation with Maryanne, seems to be forgetting about directors and actors from various movies!
And the time goes on trying to remember them!
We see far away a bridge and when we are above it, a sign tells us that we are in California and below us is the Colorado River.
We continue to drive in the Californian desert.
The clouds have definitively disappeared, and we decided to have a stop in the middle of nothing.
A series of absurd signs are the subject for some pictures.
Now, we no longer take the count of the miles.
The gas gauge informs us that the tank of gasoline is almost empty, so, it’s time to have another pit-stop.
We stop near the railroad, where a few train cars seem to be waiting for rust rather than to travel.
We decide to arrive in San Francisco today..
It’s a good idea, the tank is full, and some tuna sandwiches and a cup of coffèè can be enough for the travel!
The night comes immediately, some purple clouds inform us of the sunset, and when the sun disappears behind the horizon, it’s already dark!
More than one hundred miles separate us from the Golden Gate, but, when we arrive, and the famous bridge appears to us in the night, we are very happy, and like two guys we give each other a high five!
At three thirty at night, finally I can turn off the light!
We are in San Francisco.
🙂
Good Night city!
3-Travel notes
Good morning Friscoooo! (like in the famous movies of Robin Williams, but fortunatly here is not Vietnam!)
After a few hours of sleep and a little breakfast, we are walking to Lombard Street direct to the port.
The weather is not so good, but it will be better later, the concierge told us.
The port is also the fish market and the seagulls give us a welcome!
From here it is possible to see the new city far away, with its new and high buildings.
I like these things, then after a few (no sorry, a lot of..) photos at the Golden Gate and at the famous island of Alcatraz, we walk towards the new architecture.
It’s very interesting to see the old buildings mixed with the new.
Walking down the street, we meet the typically old tram, but also a lot of very curious things, like the street art!
Some advertising says to me that at the MOMA, or, SFMOMA, which stands for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cindy Sherman and Naoya Hatekeyama, two famous photographers, have an exhibition,
The exhibition is very big, and we spend all afternoon in the museum!
At seven o’clock, we are very tired indeed, and the way back the hotel is very long.
Unfortunately we had only this day to visit this wonderful city.
4-Travel notes
..good bye Frisco..
The weather this morning is still bad, and then my program to take some pictures at the Golden Gate from the harbor is fading.
Anyway, we go to take a breakfast near the Aquarium, because in that place there is a Hard Rock Cafè, and it is necessary for me to buy a T-shirt for my son and a brooch for my daughter for their collection!
Well, we decide to go back to Santa Fè, but we take another way.
We decide to go through Yosemite Park (the best place in the world for the climbers!)..and then go to Las Vegas!
The landscape is very amazing indeed!!..I know now why Ansel Adams spent a lot of time in this place to take a lot of photos!
The road goes far away between trees and beautiful rock.
The trees, at both sides of the road, are watching us and we feel like we are in a church.
After this indigestion of trees the landscapes changes another time..and slowly arrives a desert land.
The road resembles a cut in a sheet of paper, and I remember the famous italian artist Lucio Fontana and his cutter on canvas.
This work of the nature is completed by the presences of the moon.
We leave the Californian desert to that of Nevada.
Nobody on the horizont, only dry grass, hill or mountains and blue sky!
Even on the radio there’s nobody!..we search the stations, but the answers is always the same..:” none found”!
The sunset arrives, like every day, but the trip is still long.
Another pit stop for gasoline, coffeè, a cigarette and one photo for this blog.
..and after five hundred and fifty miles we arrive in Las Vegas!
At eleven o’clock there is still time for a walk in the middle of this crazy lighting city!!
I have an impression..a thought.. It is just like fake food!!
🙂
..good night Las Vegas!
5-Travel notes
Ninty-four fahrenheit degrees at nine o’clock in the morning..fiù!!..and in the afternoon? It’s better not to think!
Even better to leave this city early!
Random thoughts about Las Vegas:
-Rather than a city, I think it is a money machine and we are the workers, and ask my self..for whom?
-Why in all the United States is it forbidden to smoke, and in Las Vegas it is allowed to smoke in all the place?..probably it is better not to stop the workers from smoking, so they can continually keep working.
-I looked at all these people, especially the woman, obviously!..same short dress, same high-heeled shoes, same trick..certainly, a women with jeans, t-shirt and Converse on their feet attracts the attention more than the other..my attentions at least!!
-I ask my self…I’m thinking like an old man, a bigot to the past? 🙂
Okay, let’s go to our trip, It’s better!
Nevada desert..a different kind of desert, and the road!
We face a long travel today to arrive in Santa Fè, so few stops, for gasoline, food and the inevitable cigarettes!
We are a little tired, so as we change the driver, the other takes a little nap!
I drive in the company of my random thoughts while the view flows away like the miles and the country..Nevada..Arizona..
During a little nap, I had a dream…(not so great as that of Martin Luther King!!) I dreamed just about my daughter, so, when we stopped at the gas station, and It was a little Navajos shop, I talked to the old saleslady. The usual things..where are you from..do you have children?..
I think that the events don’t happen by accident..I dreamt of my daughter and after a short time I talk with a Native American that sells dreamcatchers! I buy one, and ask the old woman if she can write her native name on it and she did! I think it is a sign of good luck!
We approach the border of New Mexico between storm and rainbow!
The little trip is almost at an end.
More than two thousand three hundred miles in less than 5 days! Wow, It’s not a little trip!
A last stop for changing drivers and a cigarettes, sitting on the stone guard rail..
..and we are at home!
Just only one last photo to close this report..any consideration would be too much!
See you son..I hope!